


The Continued Adventures of the SUV(s)

by jantotrash



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Car Accident, M/M, angst with an eventual happy ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 17:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7767490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jantotrash/pseuds/jantotrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack is a really bad driver.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Car Crash

Ianto groaned.  Why was he passed out on a bed?

 

"Are you okay?" Jack mumbled sleepily from next to him.

 

Oh.  Right.

 

"No, I'm starving, and I think I know why."  Ianto said, turning to Jack.

 

"Right.  Dinner.  I forgot that I have no nutritional value." Jack smirked.  Ianto fake punched Jack in the arm.

 

"Since you were the one that 'forgot', you have to go get food."

 

"If you say so.  I'll take the SUV."  Ianto groaned again in response.  "What?"

 

"Please don't crash it again.  You're hiking up the insurance rates."

 

"It's not my fault everyone else is reckless on the road."

 

"Everyone else?  You're the one who crashed into the same wall twice and got twenty speeding tickets in the last month."

 

"It's not speeding if I'm going after aliens."

 

"Tell that to the insurance company.  It's also beginning to look strange when I have to visit the engravers to re-engrave 'TORCHWOOD' on the SUV at least once a week.  If you'd read the monthly budget reports, you'd know that bribery is getting very expensive.  Plus, we're already on our third SUV."

 

"Do you want me to go get food or would you like to get it, Mr. 'I'm-better-at-driving'?"

 

"Fine.  But I am better at driving!"  Ianto retorted.  Jack laughed as he walked out, barely pausing to throw on a shirt.

 

About twenty minutes passed, which Ianto used to take a short nap.  His nap was cut short by the building lurching slightly, several loud crashing noises, and at least two car alarms.  He swore and dashed to get pants and a shirt on.

 

Ianto ran down two sets of staircases before he saw the damage.  He swore again, this time under his breath, and ran faster down the last set.  Jack had managed to crash the SUV into the building and three separate cars that were all at least a yard away from each other.  The insurance company was not going to be happy.

 

"Jack, what in the world did you do?"  At this point, people had started to peek their heads out of their doors to see what was happening.  Some had even gotten their cell phones out to capture the damage.  Jack looked at Ianto sheepishly.

 

"Well, it's not how it looks.  There is a very good reason for this."  Ianto sighed and rubbed his forehead.

 

"Jack, how in the world can you justify hitting four objects within the span of less than a minute?  How fast were you going?"

 

"Only about a hundred."

 

Ianto was silent for a moment.

 

"I warned you, Jack.  You can't go this fast outside of the job.  And now that I'm thinking about it, I think you should slow down generally.  You're way too reckless.  You could have died."  Ianto choked back a sob.  He really was very angry, but his feelings were starting to catch up with him.  Oh no, no, no, no.  He couldn't get like this.  He knew that Jack was immortal; he knew Jack would come back.  But Ianto knew more than his coworkers did.  He knew how much pain Jack felt after dying.  Every time that Jack died, he practically begged Ianto to let him stay over.  Nothing ever happened on those nights.  They just sat with each other.

 

Ianto snapped out of his stupor to see Jack approaching him.  Jack stroked Ianto's hair and whispered into his ear.

 

"I'm sorry."


	2. Feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ianto realizes something that could be very bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that something is going wrong with formatting when I paste it in, so the extra spaces between lines have been removed (at least, I'm pretty sure that they're all gone). Enjoy!

The next morning, Ianto arrived to work slightly later than usual.  Jack had stayed over, but he always left Ianto's flat early in the morning.  It was part of a subconscious pact that they'd both made; Jack would arrive at the hub before anyone realized that he'd been away and Ianto would arrive as normal.  Most of the time, part of Ianto wished that Jack could stay longer.

Ianto was late this particular morning because he didn't fall asleep until about four in the morning.  He blamed this on worrying about the many insurance reports that he'd have to fill out at work, but this was not the case.  He was thinking about his feelings.  Ianto despised thinking about his feelings.

"Good morning, Ianto!"  Toshiko said brightly.  Ianto managed a smile and a nod in her direction before he rushed off to make coffee.  He certainly needed it today.

After drinking a cup of it himself, he set off to deliver the morning brew to his coworkers.  He saved Jack's coffee for last, mainly because Ianto wasn't sure how to handle Jack.

Ianto knocked on Jack's office door.  It was rarely closed.

"Come in."  Ianto took a deep breath before entering.

"Coffee, sir?" he said with a falsely calm tone.

"Yes, thanks Ianto."  Jack's eyes lingered on Ianto as he put coffee on Jack's desk.  As he made to leave the room, Jack spoke again.

"Ianto… I am sorry."  Ianto didn't turn around.

"It's more than that, Jack."  Ianto hadn't meant it that harshly.  He felt something in his chest pulling him toward Jack, to apologize, to explain, to cry.

Ianto left the room.

\--

The archives were the best place for Ianto to be right now.  No one ever really went down there besides Ianto, and he had spent enough time deep in the archives organizing to know all of the secluded corners.  Ianto still thought that Torchwood should invest in CCTV in the archives, but right now it was convenient that no one had gotten around to it yet.

What in the world was he doing?  He wasn't supposed to get attached to Jack; this was just supposed to be a one time thing.  Their arrangement.  And yet he found himself scared for Jack, more protective of Jack than he was of himself.  That was stupid since, after all, Jack could never die but Ianto only had one short, fleeting life.  It was more than that. Ianto was more worried about Jack's happiness than his own life.

_I think I love him._

Ianto swore.  He couldn't possibly love Jack, right?  He couldn't love Jack.  And yet… Ianto couldn't ignore this feeling.  He was a master at ignoring his feelings, but these were too powerful.   Ianto had to keep his cool, but he couldn't do that with the raging storm inside of him.  He had no choice but to tell Jack.

He took a deep breath.  The insurance reports needed to be completed, so he could use that as an excuse to get out of most social interaction with the rest of the team.  He'd tell Jack later.

\--

As grueling as insurance reports were, they were much better than talking to anyone.  Ianto only had to stay a little past the end of work to finish them.  Even if  he'd already finished, he would have forced himself to stay to talk to Jack, as much as he didn't want to now. 

Jack would be up in his office, waiting for Ianto to inevitably walk in.  Ianto was very tempted to simply walk out.  He took a deep breath.  He had to do this.

So Ianto found himself knocking on Jack's office door and entering before Jack had even started to speak.  Ianto sat down across from him and crossed his arms.

"Why are you mad at me?" Jack asked.  He was sitting up in his chair, not sitting back as he normally did.  Ianto found that endearing.

"You don't care about yourself.  You don't care about if you die or not, but when you do die you're miserable.  You take risks that have no reward, Jack!  They're stupid risks, and you could've gotten hurt.  In fact, I'm surprised you didn't die in that crash,"  Ianto paused, "I get scared, Jack."

The weight of these words seemed to sink into the floor through the silence in the air.  The two stared at each other because they both understood what was happening here.  Their arrangement had changed, perhaps not as suddenly as those words were spoken, but still quickly.

And they were both scared.


	3. Slimey-wimey Detector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Torchwood Fest Day 5 (SUV).
> 
> It's not explained in the chapter itself, but Ianto presumably came up with the name for the slimey-wimey detector from either Martha or something in the archives. Neither I nor violet-ray-of-sunshine (on tumblr) could come up with a better name, so there it is!

Much had changed for Jack and Ianto in a month. Ianto had sorted out a payment plan for the new SUV that accommodated the extra expense of the insurance company, who'd considerably hiked up their rates. Jack had paid them a visit, but it didn't seem to have done much, since they only agreed to bring the rate down by 2%. Jack assured Ianto that this would save them a lot of money in the long run, which Ianto took to be a prediction for the future. Therefore, Ianto took the liberty of paying a little extra for added safety features and crash protection for their new SUV.

"Jack, wake up. You have to be at the hub in an hour," Ianto said, shaking him awake. Jack hid his head underneath his pillow.

"Do I have to? Why don't we just come in at the same time?" Jack said, or at least Ianto thought so. It was difficult to hear him through the pillow.

"Are you suggesting that we stop pretending and go to work together?" Ianto said after a short pause.

"Yes."

Ianto couldn't help but smile. "Okay, you're the boss. But we're not going to work late, so we should get breakfast anyway."

Jack threw the pillow at him.

\--

When the rest of the team made it to the hub that morning, Jack and Ianto were already there. Ianto thanked the heavens for this. He wasn't quite ready to acknowledge that they were "together" in any sense of the word. Come to think of it, he couldn't figure out if they were even dating. However, there wasn't time to think about it now. It was time to work.

Toshiko raised the alarm. "Jack?" she shouted. Jack poked his head out of his office.

"Some sort of...alien slime at an office down the street. It seems to be threatening the office workers with a gun that covers people in delicious, poisonous slime. They can't stop eating it, and then they die." Tosh said amidst the team rushing around her trying to find their gear.

"Okay, we'll take the SUV. Tosh, Owen, you two stay here. We'll take some readings at the scene and send them back to you to analyze. Ianto, Gwen, with me." Jack jogged toward the exit with Ianto and Gwen close behind, lugging about thirty pounds of equipment. When they made it to the SUV, Jack was there waiting for them.

"Don't we have all of that in the SUV already?"

"First of all, this is the Alien Slime Contamination Scanning, Reporting, and Containment Kit. Secondly, no." Ianto replied as he shoved his half of the kit into the back of the SUV.

"We have an Alien Slime Contamination Scanning, Reporting, and Containment Kit?" Jack asked as he helped Gwen with her half.

"Yes. I call it the Slimey-wimey detector."

Jack and Gwen considered the name for a moment and nodded.

\--

The office building was, simply put, havoc. The slime seemed to have mutated into several flavors somehow and everyone was running around in complete panic.

"Everyone, stay calm!" Gwen yelled, trying to make people stay still to little success. Meanwhile, Ianto ran over to the nearest enclosed office and pressed a button.

"Please stay calm. We are working on getting the situation under control. Stay as still as possible while avoiding the threat, and do not consume any slime. Thank you."

Ianto emerged from the office to general calm.

"You really know your way around an office." Jack said with raised eyebrows and a smirk.

"Not the time, Jack." 

Gwen was already using the Slimey-wimey detector to analyze the nearest slime patch. "Jack, this isn't good. This has an electric charge."

"What?" Jack knelt down next to her.

"See? It's reading electricity from the slime."

Ianto knit his eyebrows together. "It must've eaten some electronic equipment." A scream came from the other side of the office building.

Jack and Gwen immediately abandoned their kit and ran toward the scream, while Ianto sighed and lugged the Containment part of the Slimey-wimey detector.

When he got there, he saw the problem. The main slime had returned with his gun. The woman who had screamed had already been shot with the gun and was now eating the toxic slime.

With a look from Jack, Ianto knew the plan.

"Mr. Slime? Hello! I wanted to ask a logistical question about your weapon. How, exactly does it work?" Jack said while Ianto snuck behind the slime with the Containment component. The slime replied with a sort of squelching sound and started pointing at parts of the gun. Ianto turned the Slimey-wimey detector on, and it sucked the slime in. The component made a beeping noise and sucked all other slime in, including the slime inside the dead bodies. Ianto didn't want to know how that worked.

"Well, that's that then." Jack said. They lugged everything, and the dead bodies, back to the SUV.

They returned to the hub with no incident. Tosh and Owen started to analyze the slime and the bodies.

"Jack, weevil report." Gwen said, looking up from her computer at him.

"Ianto? Weevil report." Jack called. Ianto emerged from the archives and nodded.

They climbed into the SUV and Jack started to drive at his ridiculous speed. Ianto winced as Jack accelerated. He should've driven.

But when the SUV started to slow down, Ianto knew there was a problem. Jack frowned and pushed down on the gas pedal further.

And then it clicked in Ianto's mind. "Jack, get out!" he yelled as he unbuckled both of their seatbelts and jumped out of his car door.

Ianto rolled out of the car just in time to feel heat burn his back. He clasped his hands over his neck and waited for the shrapnel to fall. When it had, or at least as far as he could tell, he risked a look around. The SUV had been completely destroyed, but Ianto only had eyes for Jack right now. He scanned the area and instantly spotted Jack. It wasn't hard, because there wasn't much left of the car to block his view.

Jack looked okay from afar. He'd made it out of the SUV and was on the sidewalk with his hands over his neck. Ianto ran over and pulled Jack up. He looked a little groggy, but that was probably normal.

"Are you hurt?" Ianto asked. Jack shook his head. Ianto kissed him. Hard. 

"Does that mean you're not mad at me?" Jack said after he'd recovered.

"Nope, I'm still mad at you." Ianto kissed him again.

"It wasn't me though. Cars don't just explode." Jack said defensively. "Oh."

"What?" Ianto turned around. "Oh." It was the slime.

Ianto rushed over and corralled the slime as best he could with nearby car pieces. Meanwhile, Jack got on the comm and informed Gwen.

Ianto stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at the slime. Jack walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Good thing I got them to bring the payment by 2%."

"You're helping with the paperwork this time."


End file.
